The Space Between the Ellipsis (Daily Planet email #872)
We could stay here for miles. Nobody’s waiting. We left the lights on, everybody’s fooled. We could white line it out of here and no one would be the wiser, least of all us. I’m sorry I sometimes go for the gag instead of the truer meaning. I know it’s annoying. On a related note, have you wondered where the air stops and the wind begins? Two sides of the same beef, looks like. Let’s get going before I have to pee again.
You and I, we’re the verso and the scherzo. Is that not the opposite? I don’t mean we oppose each other, I didn’t mean that at all, I meant we’re connected with some measure of inevitability. Yes, I guess I was telling you. You and I could, if you also wanted to do so, could be high in those trees on the far ridge, by the cutting so we don’t get so lost. We wanna get a little lost, right? Found ain’t so great, people think they know you. We could be outside ourselves, billowing stratocumulus surprise, and who’d say no? They’d celebrate this offering, this loss of structural integrity, this monopticon, we might never come down. This ship will fly, the tensile crackle of the high tension wires suggests it. Running is the least of our methods, stopping is the most. In between, all else.
How about we could hole up in here until dawn? Ah, but there’s no window, how will we recognize the day? By the tire sounds, good. By the general smell of eggs or bread or tortillas, right, maybe. How about we could dance on the edge of a pin? Or how about we are a mill? Or an axle? How about we aspire to a malt shop? How about I put it in the bag and it can stay an idea for now? How about we could build a sky for ourselves, something like a sky but less specific, some sharp bright expanse with surprising variation? Not a kite, that’s too simple. We could hole up here until dawn, then we could disappear like all the stars do. It’s no big pipe dream, I’ve seen it done by lesser people than you. No I don’t mean me, someone greater than me but lesser than you. Your cousin Andy for instance, but not him.
You wanna stay here forever, you wanna try that? Let the meteors fall and the cloud cover east? They won’t call us, you know they won’t. We are the dust in the trees, the diamonds in the sun, the turning of the corner. There we are, two antennas on the ridge-line winking to each other in plain sight, sometimes in sync, sometimes in other. We could be the wending rivulets down the window in a December diner. We could be those bunny tracks. A winter dress and an arrangement of strings. We could be saying Yes. We could be answering Yes. We could be being Yes.
